I wonder if part of why I start feeling weird about being in New Orleans after a bit is the familiarity. Every corner of it is a place I’d been for years, since I was born. And more importantly, they’re all places I remember being a depressed, bitter boy. I had to leave town to reinvent myself; every corner brings up a palimpsest of all the previous times I was there, with a tiny hint of the moods I was in every time I passed through there as a young adult.
I dunno. More prosaically I can never stay here more than a week or so because I’m allergic to the place.
I can sort of understand what you mean. My hometown was a nothing special, blue collar kind of town and my most hated experiences were in junior high there. But since I left, every school I went to has either closed or utterly changed. The town’s become very diverse and a lot more interesting. I can’t ‘go home,’ as neither of us is the same at all. And perhaps that’s the point. The past IS the past. The now is not the past. You are not that person. Use the time at home to measure how far you’ve come, and how far that wingspan has grown.
New Orleans is pretty much the same as it ever was. It’s changed a little – things have moved around, things have come and gone – but now that it’s mostly recovered from Katrina, it still feels pretty much exactly like it did when I left it.
And if I go by the tattoo, my wingspan is about six feet. Which is a pretty big change from “no wings” when I life. n.n